July 2008 Archives

Jason Calcanis is stirring things up nicely by pointing out that Google is ranking content on Knol - Google's new wikipedia-beater - extremely highly after only a few days of operation.

His screen grab on Flickr shows Knol coming in just behind Wikipedia for searches on "music in Capoeira".  Matt Cutts commented on Twitter that the results need time to bed down - but funnily enough repeating the search in the UK this morning shows Wikipedia edged down to fifth, behind both Knol and Youtube!  (screen grab below)

Jason no doubt hunted long and hard for a search that shows Wikipedia being 'unfairly treated', but he does raise some serious questions - as Google moves into content creation and management, can they be trusted not to give their own properties an undue advantage.

The sun is shining and I'm on holiday next week, so I'm going to err on the side of hopeless optimism and say that they will.  The integrity of the algorithm is just too important to be sacrificed simply to support another potential outlet for Google Adwords - once we stop trusting Google's search results, the golden goose really is dead.

One of the classic "well they would say that wouldn't they" is Google's argument that it is important to be top of both natural and paid search.

Here's the standard bit of Google research on the subject, which suggests that you can treble the amount of traffic to your site by being prominent in both natural and search.

But is that still true if there is no competitive activity on PPC? According to our recent research - which is covered today in iMedia Connection- many prominent UK brands simply don't bother to bid on their own brand terms.

Last year's spat between Google and eBay led to eBay pulling their ppc spend from Google. Hitwise looked at the data and found that there was little or no impact on overall traffic through to eBay over this period.

The story would be very different for non-navigational terms, but for navigational / brand terms it seems that big brands are happy to ignore Google's advice.

TechCrunch reports that Live Search volumes have grown by 15% since the launch of the much derided Cashback offer a month ago. 

Fifteen percent may not be that significant in the grand scheme of things - the increase in search volumes takes Microsoft up to 9.2% in share of the search market.  But if users are shifting to Live for searches associated with purchases then this might well be taking significant revenue away from Google and Yahoo.

Live Search Cashback has only been introduced in the United States, but a successful launch presumably means that we can expect to see it in the UK before too long.

A few weeks ago I blogged excitedly about what seemed to be an exciting new trend at Google towards more openness in terms of how search results are ranked. 

There hasn't exactly been a flood of information since then, but now we have another useful post on Google's official blog - an introduction to Google Ranking from Amit Singhal who runs the ranking team within Google's Search Quality Group. 

Of course, we don't get an insight into the secret sauce within Google, and I guess we probably wouldn't be able to make much sense of the algorithms even if they were revealled.  However, the basic principles behind the ranking process are interesting:

1) Best locally relevant results served globally.
2) Keep it simple.
3) No manual intervention.

The last point will raise some eyebrows - there are endless rumours in SEO circles about particular sites being singled out for ranking penalties. But according to Amit, these changes are simply the result of tweaks to the algorithm. Hmmmm.

Anyway, more information is promised and I can't wait. Google is doing a fantastic job of demystifying the business of getting a high search ranking - which can't be entirely welcome news in those areas of search marketing agencies whose business depends on making the process seem as complex and difficult as possible.

Now that the dust has settled on Google's controversial changes to trademark protection in the UK, we've completed a piece of research to see how the search landscape has changed.

We took a list of 100 top brands across different sectors and looked at the search results page for searches on the brand name itself.  I was expecting a scene of carnage as brands bid against each other in a scramble for valuable traffic.  The reality was very different - in fact the remarkable thing really was how little paid search is happening around key brand terms.

• Almost half of all brands - including companies like HSBC, Tesco and Marks and Spencer - are not bidding on their own brand terms.
• 14% of our surveyed brands showed no paid search activity.
• Bidding by direct competitors on brand terms is largely restricted to just two sectors: finance and travel.

Finance is one of the most competitive sectors - but even here, massive brands like HSBC, NatWest and LloydsTSB have essentially opted out of Google Adwords for their key brand terms.

The full white paper on Trademark Bidding on Google is now online. 

The IAB has today launched a new set of resources for search marketers in the UK. 

I sit on the IAB's Search Council which has put these resources together, so I've had the inside track on the hours of discussion (and even argument) that lies behind these documents.

The Search Council is kind of unique in the UK as it is (I think) the one forum where representatives of the key search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and many of the big digital media agencies sit around the same table.

I'm glad to see that the resources are actually tackling some thorny subjects (which it would have been easy and tempting to disregard).  So you'll find information on trademarks, copyright, privacy for search, invalid clicks and

A new study by a marketing professor at Harvard Business School casts doubt on one of the sacred texts of new media - Chris Anderson's book 'The Long Tail'.

Anita Elberse looked at data for online purchases of music and video rentals and then compared the data with offline purchase data.  In spite of the vast back catalogue of options available online, it seems that online consumers are pretty much like their offline equivalent.  Purchases hugely favour a few 'hit' titles - and if anything people online are more likely to focus their spending on popular choices than offline shoppers.

It seems that what we really value is not choice, but the social aspects of consuming the same media as everyone else. 

Can't say I'm sorry to see the back of this particular theory - it seemed to me that the same two businesses were always trotted out in support of it (eBay and Amazon) which didn't seem to me to be a conclusive sample.

On the other hand, if the Long Tail is a lie, the online world is a somewhat bleaker place where almost all the micro-publishers, bloggers, video artists and musicians are doomed to a life of obscurity - including me!!!